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Abstract

Understanding the scale of connectivity and adaptation among marine populations
can inform fisheries conservation and management. We used a combination of advanced
genomic techniques and experimental methods to determine the scale of connectivity and
adaptation in the sea scallop, Placopecten magellanicus. Restriction-site Associated DNA
sequencing genotyped 7163 SNPs in 245 individuals across 12 populations in the
Northwest Atlantic. Subsequent analysis of these data identified a strong separation
between populations north and south of Nova Scotia and identified an association
between population structure and the coldest temperatures experienced by scallop
populations. Common garden experiments on a northern and southern populations found
that larvae from the north grew more quickly overall, potentially an adaptive strategy to
the northern winter. These observations contribute to growing evidence of fine-scale
population structure and adaptation in marine systems and support the hypothesis that a
combination of limited dispersal and adaptive differentiation drives sea scallop population
structure.